Throughout this past year, you have all been so supportive of my blogging, so I felt I owed you a very Happy Holidays, a Merry Christmas and a VERY Happy New Year at least.

You will be receiving my views (if you like) twice weekly in the New Year and beyond as I am capable. Those that know about these things are also looking into a VLOG for me so that you can see me rant in person. I am told that it is something to see, hahahah.

As 2016 passes into memory we are faced with an Administration running amok in its last few days even to the consternation of its allies on the Hill and elsewhere. 2017 and the Trump Administration cannot come too soon. Let’s have a look:

Cabinet Picks

Time will tell but Trump has selected simply superior people to do these jobs. They are a good mix of necessary Washington swamp dwellers and outsiders with fresh perspectives and new ideas which will shake things up considerably. On most picks, even the Democrats aren’t too upset – and with the ones that they are carping about most, the complaints are predictable and fall on Republican/Democrat fault lines.

In my opinion, there is no loss of competency or ability in any new cabinet post from Obama to Trump. In many cases, the change will gain ability and productivity – especially at State. To get rid of the ketchup king and replace that inane droning pompous windbag with Tillerson can’t come too soon – read on . . .

Israel

Speaking out of both sides of his mouth, President Obama dynamited the long standing doctrine of a two-state solution in Israel while stating that he has been the best friend to Israel ever. Tel-Aviv disagrees. Obama dealt a death blow to the two-state solution by foreclosing any present opportunity Israel might have in maintaining defensible borders by including the West Bank in its part of the State of Israel – not to mention permanently dividing Jerusalem into two, separate countries. The United States duplicitously “abstained” from a vote when Kerry clearly made a case for a “yes” vote. It is all the more outrageous understanding that the vote had been put off by Egypt but the United States used its influence to resurrect it and then breathtakingly abstain. Maybe Obama was harkening back to the Illinois Senate days when he voted “present” in record numbers of times in lieu of actually taking a position in an effort to have it both ways.

Secretary Kerry droned on for almost 90 minutes trying to justify this insane stance. Obama had eight years to make this radical change but waited until about four weeks before he leaves office to accomplish this complete reversal of US policy.

Sadly, the only way we can really look at this is a petty, vituperative and personal (FU) to Bibi Netanyahu – the same guy that Obama and the DNC were personally and specifically involved in trying to negatively affect his recent re-election. (For a real understanding of this hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of his fawning press, read this along with my comments on Cybersecurity below).

This foreign policy failure of a President wants to cap his awesome international disasters by perverting the official US position to accommodate his personal need to vent. Wow. Even the Simon Wiesenthal Center (a deeply respected non-partisan international NGO dedicated to ending anti-Semitism) rated this act as number one on their list of the top ten most anti-Semitic acts of 2016 anywhere in the world.

Cybersecurity

In a snit as well, President Obama sent his minions out to find evidence of Russian involvement in the late US elections. The same guys that brought you the Benghazi explanation of a video tape causing the death of our Ambassador have found – something. Let me explain.

There are four questions that are of high interest: First, Does Russia regularly cyber-attack the United States’ institutions, corporations and structures? Answer: Yes, they do and have for ages – as we do to them – as the Chinese do to everyone – as every state on earth engages in this activity. It is an extension of spying that we all assume we both do and have done to us by friend and foe alike.

Second: Did the Russian specifically hack the DNC and Podesta e-mails and distribute them to WikiLeaks? Answer: maybe. Brennan at the CIA says yes. The FBI and Homeland Thursday says that the DNC was subject to attacks by Russia but the report falls short of making the Russia-DNC-Podesta-WikiLeaks connection specifically. No one else has chimed-in much less than all 17 intelligence structures agreeing as the press maintains. Third: Did the Russians hack the election itself? Answer: All agree, no it did not. Fourth: Did the Russian activity affect the election? Answer: All agree, no it did not.

The Obama Administration has conflated these four questions in order to allow the press to say that the “Russians hacked the election.” Both Obama and the mainstream press have a desire to hobble the legitimacy of the Trump Administration with this obfuscation. They want to allow those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome to label the President-Elect as some kind of Russian puppet or Manchurian Candidate. During the Obama Presidency, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Russians and others have made successful and very damaging cyber-attacks against us and we have done nothing – absolutely nothing over the past eight years. Now we have feckless sanctions against Russia (NYTimes’ assessment not mine) just in time for the inaugural.

C’mon, tell me that this is not political. I am from Chicago and know these guys. Believe me, this is political. Remember, absolutely everything done by the Chicago Guys is political. Holding office is just a way to wield power for your own personal benefit and for those of your friends and to punish your enemies.

The full truth of this will come along over time and I believe that it will not go the way the Obama people are herding it right now.

Syria

While President Obama is throwing Pythian shots against enemies all around, the Turks, the Russians and Assad met to negotiate a cease-fire in Syria. This was a task beyond the capability of the Obama Administration throughout his presidency. It’s another failure of this hapless, foreign policy-bereft administration. I’d like to hear Kerry talk for 90 minutes about how he couldn’t do this while others did. I think Trump was looming as “the elephant on the room” (pun intended) while these folks penned a solution. Not wanting to deal with the new President who will have a renewed policy of direct action against terrorism, the Syrian players came to the table to try to get some solution before the 82nd Airborne arrives – sooner than anyone thinks.

Peace through Strength works.

Some Odds and Ends

The President is dropping “Executive Order” bombs to reward his pals left, right and center. Such as: an unprecedented number of pardons; preparing to order Gitmo closed and effectively freeing the inmates therein; placing over a million acres of Utah into federal “protected” hands from the people of Utah with no support from the right or left in Utah; placing all off-shore drilling on “permanent” hold and on and on and on. This is kind of a Mad Hatter thing. Stuff that will have no lasting impact but he does with fury and abandon.

For his part, the President-Elect is working on his agenda while respecting that we have a different President in the office right now. Much of President Obama’s dictates at the end will be ignored, slow-rolled and otherwise thwarted by bureaucrats looking to the new President and his policies to confirm or change these positions. In the end, the bureaucrats will do what the current President should be doing – making the transition a smooth one. Happy New Year....